maudmartha

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also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.

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(via lunamonchtuna)

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losing it a little at Hanif Abdurraqib's new year post

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temporary job by Minnie Bruce Pratt

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Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

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“Upon Turning 25, A Small Nervous Breakdown” by Megan Williams

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What a complete and separate thing I am

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

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leonard cohen

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[ID: A letter from Emily Dickinson to Susan Huntington Dickinson. The text reads, "I love you as dearly, Susie, as when love first began, on the step at the front door, and under the Evergreens, and it breaks my heart sometimes, because I do not hear from you. I wrote you many days ago — I wont say many weeks, because it will look sadder so, and then I cannot write — but Susie, it troubles me. I miss you, mourn for you, and walk the Streets alone — often at night, beside, I fall asleep in tears, for your dear face, yet not one word comes back to me from that silent West. If it is finished, tell me, and I will raise the lid to my box of Phantoms, and lay one more love in; but if it lives and beats still, still lives and beats for me, then say me so, and I will strike the strings to one more strain of happiness before I die." /end ID]

This was crazyy of emily. Imagine receiving a letter like this in the 1850s from your best friend that you have a homoerotic relationship with

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[ID: Text reading, "Today I think I am healed. I do not want what I do not have. Even the lover who sleeps across town—one of my hairs trapped behind his ear— feels near to me. Sure, my mother did not hold me enough, too tempted by the specter of satiety only alcohol can bring. But I do not resent her. Even she is wild and shining on the palace of memory, my mind’s glass castle. Last night I woke from a dream of a terrible storm to the sounds of a terrible storm: wind rattling the windows, knocking branches against the roof. No one was there to hold me, and I was happy. A little curtain of satisfaction fell over my face while I lay there, wanting nothing." /end ID]

Patrick Dundon, from "Gratitude"

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Joy Sullivan, "State of Emergency", Instructions for Traveling West

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Alejandra Pizarnik, tr. by Yvette Siegert, "Summer Goodbyes", Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972

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Leonard Cohen to Marianne Ihlen ("My darling Marianne"), [New York] 11 February 1963

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[ID: Text reading, "Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch, chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by." /end ID]

fr. “Antilamentation” by Dorianne Laux

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[ID: Image of text reading, "Nobody can counsel you and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heat, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it ere denied you tow rite. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according ot this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and testimony to it." /end ID]

from letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke